“You’re right, my man,” said the Union captain, “and your feelings do you credit.  Now I have a suggestion to make.  Not one of us is capable of using a word before her that she shouldn’t hear, if not out of our heads.  We can pay her a better tribute than that.  Let us decide to speak in her absence as if she were present.  That’s about all we can do in return for her kindness.  She won’t know the cost to us in breaking habits, but we will, and that’s better.  We all feel that we’d like to spill some more of our blood for the girl who fed Phillips yonder as if he were a baby.  Well, let us do the only thing we can—­speak as if our mothers heard us all the time, for this girl’s sake.”

“I be blanked if I don’t agree, and may the devil fly away with the man who doesn’t,” cried Yarry.

“Ah, Yarry,” said the captain, laughing, “you’ll have the hardest row of any of us to hoe.  We’ll have to let you off for some slips.”

Then began among the majority a harder fight than that for life—­a fight with inveterate habit, an effort to change vernacular, almost as difficult as the learning of a new language.  For some time Miss Lou did not know nor understand.  Word had been passed to other and smaller groups of the Union wounded in other buildings.  The pledge was soon known as “A Northern Tribute to a Southern Girl.”  It was entered into with enthusiasm and kept with a pathetic effort which many will not understand.  Yarry positively began to fail under the restraint he imposed upon himself.  His wound caused him agony, and profanity would have been his natural expression of even slight annoyance.  All day long grisly oaths rose to his lips.  Now and then an excruciating twinge would cause a half-uttered expletive to burst forth like a projectile.  A deep groan would follow, as the man became rigid in his struggle for self-control.

“Yarry,” cried Captain Hanfield, who had suggested the pledge, “let yourself go, for God’s sake.  You have shown more heroism to-day than I in all my life.  We will make you an exception and put you on parole to hold in only while Miss Baron is here.”

“I be—­oh, blank it!  This is going to be the death of me, boys.  The Rebs gave me hell with this wound.  But for God’s sake don’t let her know.  Just let her think I’m civil like the rest of you.  Wouldn’t she open them blue eyes if she knew a man was dyin’, just holdin’ in cussin’ on her account.  Ha, ha, ha!  She’d think I was a sort of a Yankee devil, worse than the Injins she expected.  Don’t let her know.  I’ll be quiet enough before long.  Then like enough she’d look at me and say, ‘Poor fellow! he won’t make any more trouble.’”